[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 98 (Tuesday, July 13, 1999)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1529-E1530]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


        PRESIDENT LYNDON B. JOHNSON'S RIGHTFUL PLACE IN HISTORY

                                 ______
                                 

                            HON. GENE GREEN

                                of texas

                    in the house of representatives

                         Tuesday, July 13, 1999

  Mr. GREEN of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to pay special tribute 
to President Lyndon B. Johnson. President Johnson was born on August 
27, 1908, in central Texas, not far from Johnson City, which his family 
had helped settle. He knew poverty firsthand, which helped him learn 
compassion for the poverty of others.
  In 1960, Johnson was elected as John F. Kennedy's Vice President. On 
November 22, 1963, when Kennedy was assassinated, Johnson was sworn in 
as President.
  On May 22, 1964, in a speech at the University of Michigan President 
Lyndon B. Johnson spoke of a ``Great Society.'' He said, ``The Great 
Society rests on abundance and liberty for all. It demands an end to 
poverty and racial injustice, to which we are totally committed in our 
time. But that is just the beginning.''
  President Johnson's vision included aid to education, attack on 
disease, Medicare, urban renewal, beautification, conservation, 
development of depressed regions, a wide-scale fight against poverty, 
control and prevention of crime and delinquency, and the removal of 
obstacles to the right to vote.
  On July 6, 1999, the Houston Chronicle printed a column by Marianne 
Means, a Washington, D.C.-based columnist for the Hearst Newspapers, 
which details why President Johnson will be considered as one of our 
nation's greatest Presidents. Mr. Speaker, I would like to conclude by 
including Ms. Means' column in my remarks.

              Don't Forget LBJ--His Legacy Highly Visible

                          (By Marianne Means)

       For 30 years, President Lyndon B. Johnson has been ignored 
     by Democratic politicians afraid of being tagged as liberal 
     lackeys for the much-mocked Great Society or the bloody 
     Vietnam War that brought down his presidency.
       His name is seldom mentioned in his own party. Only a few 
     brave souls defend him against conservatives who have 
     campaigned for decades against the ambitious federal social 
     programs he created and the cultural tumult of the 1960s that 
     took place during his administration.
       President Clinton has been particularly craven. Although he 
     often cites his admiration for President Kennedy, who 
     produced

[[Page E1530]]

     very little legislation, Clinton never speaks of Johnson, who 
     compiled a monumental domestic record.
       It was to remind us of Johnson's impact on our lives and 
     put a tidy historical end to the 1990s that scholars and 
     former Johnson administration officials gathered recently at 
     the Lyndon B. Johnson Library in Austin to look back across 
     the generation gap at a period of almost unimaginable change.
       This nation would be a far worse place had Lyndon Johnson 
     not occupied the White House. He demanded that elderly 
     patients get government help for health care through Medicare 
     and Medicaid, blacks be granted the right to vote and enjoy 
     equal access to public places, students be given financial 
     aid for education, consumers be protected from fraud, poverty 
     be assaulted with an array of education and employment 
     initiatives and discrimination attacked with affirmative-
     action concepts.
       This remarkable domestic revolution was overwhelmed by 
     public outrage at Johnson for escalating a distant war in 
     which more than 50,000 U.S. soldiers died. As a young 
     student, Clinton himself dodged the draft to avoid being sent 
     to Vietnam. Resentment of the war still fuels Clinton's 
     chilly attitude toward Johnson even though Clinton has fought 
     to perpetuate and expand most of LBJ's social programs.
       But finally that war is fading into history. It was nearly 
     a quarter century ago that we fled Saigon in defeat. Now 
     diplomatic and trade ties are being restored and even battle-
     scarred veterans are returning there on sentimental visits.
       If the war itself can recede, so can public anger at LBJ. 
     He didn't live long enough to crusade for his own political 
     rehabilitation, as Richard Nixon did. But time may do the 
     task for him.
       And despite decades of conservative scorn, the Great 
     Society and the War on Poverty still exist, sometimes under 
     different labels.
       At the LBJ Library symposium, Joseph Califano Jr., a former 
     Johnson White House assistant and Jimmy Carter's secretary of 
     health, education and welfare, summed up LBJ's domestic 
     record. And what a stunning record it is. He shoved through a 
     reluctant Congress all sorts of radical ideas to help 
     ordinary people.
       For the first time, the federal government subsidized 
     scholarships, grants and work-study programs to expand 
     education opportunities for students from families with 
     limited resources. Since 1965, the federal government has 
     provided more than $120 billion for elementary and secondary 
     schools and billions for college loans.
       Today, nearly 60 percent of full-time undergraduate 
     students receive federal financial aid. When LBJ took office, 
     only 41 percent of Americans had completed high school; only 
     8 percent held college degrees. Last year, more than 81 
     percent had finished high school and 24 percent had completed 
     college.
       Medicare and Medicaid provided millions of elderly 
     Americans with health insurance for the first time. Since 
     1965, 79 million senior citizens have benefited from 
     Medicare. Since 1966, more than 200 million poor Americans 
     have been helped financially by Medicaid.
       The food stamp program launched in 1967 helps to feed more 
     than 20 million people in more than 8 million households. The 
     school breakfast program begun the same year has provided a 
     daily breakfast to nearly 100 million schoolchildren.
       Johnson's civil rights act ended the officially segregated 
     society that belied the American promise of freedom. No 
     longer did blacks have to drink from separate water fountains 
     and eat in separate restaurants. No longer were they 
     automatically denied equal opportunities for jobs and 
     education.
       Johnson was proudest of the Voting Rights Act, which 
     outlawed all the sneaky practices that kept blacks from the 
     ballot box. In 1964, there were only 300 black elected 
     officials in the country; by 1998, there were more than 
     9,000. In 1965 there were five blacks in the House; today 
     there are 39.
       Although conservatives charge that LBJ's Great Society was 
     a failure, Great Society projects like Head Start, the Job 
     Corps, Community Health Centers, Foster Grandparents, Upward 
     Bound and Indian and migrant worker programs helped reduce 
     the number of Americans living in poverty. When LBJ took 
     office, 22.2 percent of Americans lived below the poverty 
     level. Today 13.3 percent are below that level, still too 
     many but a trend in the right direction.

     

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